These Guys: Sixers-Celtics for First Time in '11-'12

We thought it was safe—well, borderline safe—to bury the Celtics earlier
in the season when discussing the Atlantic Division race. The C's were
5-9 through 14 games while the Sixers were 10-4, and the C's were 15-17
through 32 games while the Sixers were 20-12. But now the Celtics have
won five in a row while the Sixers have lost eight of their last ten
(yikes!), meaning that now the two teams are separated by just a game in
the Eastern Conference standings. Yup—if the C's beat the Sixers
tonight, they'll be tied on top of the Atlantic for the first time since
the second week of the season. Spooky.

Reports have it that Nik Vucevic and Evan Turner will be starting for
the Sixers again tonight, as they did in Milwaukee. [UPDATE: Thad Young is sick and will not play this evening, so Coach Collins said he will start Tony Battie to face KG and bring Nik off the bench] To say that the
experiment was not a resounding success on Monday would be a definite
understatement—the two went a combined 4-20 from the field for eight
points in a combined 49 minutes. Howard Eskin
reports that Turner, whose 32 minutes and 1-12 shooting night accounted
for most of that inefficiency, is now going to be a starter for the
remainder of the season—an oddly timed decision if true, considering not
just his lousy Tuesday performance but mysterious concurrent reports from Stan Hochman of the Daily News about "an explanation for Turner’s inconsistent play" which "one of these
days, the team, with Turner’s permission, will reveal...and then the
criticism will back off." Yeah, that's not weird or intriguing or anything.

The Sixers have somehow avoided facing off against the Celtics thusfar
this season, but the two squads will of course meet four times before
seasons' end, and with the gap between the two not being as great as we
may have previously believed, the Ballers' performance in those four
games may end up deciding which of the two teams wins the Atlantic and
guaranteed home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The
C's have won the division easily in every season since Kevin Garnett
joined the team in 2008, and even though their team is older and much
thinner this year than in seasons past—especially up front—they still
have the Big Three and Rajon Rondo, who have proven over their five-game
winning streak to still be deadly when firing on all cylinders as a
foursome. (New add-on Brandon Bass, jump-shooting power forward, is
pretty good too.)

7:00 tip from the WFC. To win this one, we're gonna need a big
rebounding effort up front and some major defensive scrambling against
the prolific and ball-sharing C's—not to mention some much-overdue
late-game offensive production. “We shot 13 for 49 from the floor in the
second half," Coach Collins pointed out about Tuesday's performance in
Milwaukee. “I
mean, come on. Who are you going to beat?” Not many teams, and certainly
not the reigning Atlantic champ Celtics. Gotta beat the man to be the
man, ya know.